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Old 11-03-2019, 11:54 PM
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Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
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LAFORGE: As a woman. What's the first thing you look at?
GUINAN: His head.
LAFORGE: His mind. Of course.
GUINAN: No, his head. I'm attracted to bald men.
LAFORGE: Seriously?

First, I expect that Guinan is speaking English right now, so there shouldn't be Universal Translator issues to create confusion here. Seconds, as SF Debris put it, being attracted to bald men isn't a kink deserving more than a "huh."

LAFORGE: Why?
GUINAN: Maybe because a bald man was very kind to me once when I was hurting. Took care of me.

Alternate universes aside, there has never been anything romantic between Picard and Guinan. Her line earlier is a little bit icky to me. Or rather, it will be icky once the creators repurpose it for "Time's Arrow."

LAFORGE: I'd like to do that.
GUINAN: I take care of myself these days.

Oooo, burn!

LAFORGE: Why can't I make anything work with a woman like Christi? It's like I don't know what to do, I don't know what to say.
GUINAN: You're doing fine with me.
LAFORGE: You're different.
GUINAN: No, you're different.
LAFORGE: But I'm not trying now.
GUINAN: That's my point.

Nice message.

PICARD: Mister Worf, be sure we get tricorder images of their tactical display.

Okay, the ship is in bad shape and they don't want to hang around long enough to make a full-block computer interface (the tricorder bit Data does later was for one console and one task, it would take forever to set up tricorders at every computer console and interface for full interaction). Even so, there has to be more that they could do than taking pictures of console displays.

DATA: Captain, I believe this is an information storage device. A crude analogue of our isolinear optical chip.

This would be a great place to plug the duotronics of the TOS era instead of isolinear circuitry, but whatever.

GALEK SAR [on monitor]: I am Galek Sar, Captain of the Promellian cruiser, Cleponji. I wish anyone who finds this record to know my crew has behaved courageously. I want it recorded for all time that I, alone, am responsible for the fate that befell us. I have failed as a captain, and as the man responsible for all the souls aboard my ship.

It's nice that this message pleased Picard, but to me it seems rather hamfisted and preachy. He could've included more details about the ship's current condition (i.e. move the later recorded message to this point), perhaps the message could've started as just to Picard on the tricorder screen, then cut to the senior staff watching it in the conference room.

LAFORGE: Matter-anti matter mixture ratio settings at optimum balance Reaction sequence corresponding to specified norms. Magnetic plasma transfer to warp field generators per programmed specs. Commander, we should be going like a bat out of hell.

Would people PLEASE stop using matter/antimatter ratios other than 1:1? Pretty pretty please? And Geordi does use other engine components to describe how warp should be available, couldn't they use something besides the ratio? Here's one right off the top of my head: "warp field stability optimal."

DATA: Power loss now at twelve percent, Captain. PICARD: Red alert.

Earlier five percent power loss justified Yellow Alert. You gotta wonder if there's an official scale of power loss vs. alert level. I'd have any uncontrollable power loss beyond the noise/random fluctuation level go straight to Red Alert, this is a big deal!

LAFORGE [OC]: We'd better slow these engines down before we burn out the reaction chamber.

What? The plasma is leaving the warp core just fine, it's the warp coils that aren't able to turn it into propulsion! "We have to slow these engines down before we burn out the warp coils." Treknobabble isn't hard, people!

COMPUTER: Affirmative. The opposing force grew in direct proportion to the power output of the Enterprise. LAFORGE: So it kept us from forming a subspace field for the warp drive? COMPUTER: That is correct.

So the warp coils aren't being burned out, they're creating a warp field just fine, it's just that the booby trap creates a counterfield to negate it. So why are we feeding plasma to the warp coils right now if all it's doing is bleeding into space?

LAFORGE: Computer, who is this L. Brahms?

This whole premise seems strange to me. Brahms only designed the warp engines, if she input information about how the warp drive works that is inaccessible in any other way, that's pretty mean of her. Furthermore, the holodeck is a huge power drain! Shouldn't Geordi be reading the complete engine specs to refresh his memory?

LEAH [OC]: Theoretical propulsion logs, Federation Starship Enterprise, Galaxy class. Heading, Subspace. Author, Leah Brahms.

What makes the Enterprise warp core any different from the other Galaxy-class ships that preceded her? Shouldn't Leah's work apply equally to all of them? While canon doesn't say what was the first Galaxy-class (although concluding that the USS Galaxy was first is hardly a huge stretch), the expanded universe places the Galaxy's launch at 2357 and Enterprise and Yamato in 2363. There are dozens more Galaxy-classes mentioned in the novels. Even if Leah improved the Galaxy's engine specs for Enterprise and Yamato, shouldn't her log mention "second-model Galaxy-class warp engines" and not the Enterprise specifically?

CRUSHER: I recommend we evacuate and seal off all non-operational areas, and group the families and crew on the odd-numbered decks.

Non-operational areas should already be sealed off, and there should be designated shelters to maintain life support in as few places as possible.

CRUSHER: I'd also like to set up an assembly area for treating radiation symptoms in case it's needed.

Yeah, it's called Sickbay. And why'd you say "in case it's needed"? It will be needed!

PICARD: After the shields fall, how long before fatal exposure? CRUSHER: Thirty minutes.

Now I'm being pedantic. Different alien races (also different ages, etc.) have different radiation tolerances, you can't assume equal time to death. I know, I know, thirty minutes is probably the number for the least tolerant group, but still...

RIKER [OC]: Away team to Enterprise. Captain, we may have found something. There's a file of memory [Warship Bridge]
RIKER: Coils here.
DATA: They are identical to the coil we found earlier, Captain.
PICARD [OC]: The Captain's log, perhaps?
RIKER: That's what we were thinking.

Why weren't all the memory coils sought out the first time? Once they found one, it should be easy enough to program the tricorder to search for more. Finding the coils the first time and having it take until now to defrag and reconstruct would serve the plot equally well, right?

LAFORGE: Computer, generate a cross section image of the dilithium crystal chamber. What about re-orienting the crystal?

Moving the crystal around will just modify the efficiency of the matter-antimatter reaction and how focused the warp plasma stream will be. I fail to see how that's going to help in this case.

LEAH [OC]: The dilithium crystal chamber was designed at outpost designated Seran T One, Stardate 40052.

Stardate 40052 is in 2362. So we're definitely talking the second-model Galaxy-class. However, two years from design to construction seems a little fast. You have to imagine that the Constitution-class refit was still being designed during the original five-year mission (Kirk's original mission, that is, not April's).

LAFORGE: Great. Another woman who won't get personal with me in the holodeck. Leah, I want to find a way to supplement the energy supply to the ship and to the engines. Could we alter the matter-antimatter paths? LEAH [OC]: Theoretically, yes. The system should be able to accept more reactants at a faster rate of injection.

So Geordi wants larger incoming matter and antimatter streams, it still has nothing to do with realigning the crystals. If anything it should require LARGER crystals! Does he have the time or power to recrystallize the dilithium in the articulation frame?

LAFORGE: Then, if we use multiple injector streams, hitting more than one crystal facet, we could do it, we could hold our own.

Where's the tech to create and maintain multiple injector streams going to come from? It seems like Geordi would have to rebuild the ends of the warp core from scratch to accomplish this.

LAFORGE: Captain, we've found a way to extend the matter-antimatter energy supplies.

Is that what he did? I thought he wanted to burn the supplies faster to make more warp power!

COMPUTER: Warp energy has increased fourteen percent.

Okay, so we have fourteen percent more plasma for the warp coils. If the hope was that at some point the negating field would be saturated and unable to prevent more warp field creation, the writers forgot to have the characters tell us that.
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